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Modern art is pants
By Tom Teodorczuk, Evening Standard 22.08.06
Satirical works: Sir Nicholas Serota Makes An Acquisitions Decision
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They have memorably dismissed the BritArt establishment as "pants". Now the Stuckists - the collective of figurative painters opposed to conceptual art - have become major players themselves with a new exhibition in the West End.
Taking pot-shots at Tate director Sir Nicholas Serota still seems to be the group's first priority.
The Stuckist discovery that the gallery had purchased The Upper Room, a work by Tate trustee Chris Ofili, led to the gallery being censured by the Charity Commission last month.
This came after Sir Nicholas declined an offer by the Stuckists last year to donate 175 of their paintings to the Tate.
In what some will see as revenge, taking pride of place in the exhibition will be Charles Thomson's picture of Sir Nicholas examining a pair of red knickers - a send-up of Tracey Emin's Turner-Prize-nominated unmade bed.
In the painting, Sir Nicholas Serota Makes An Acquisitions Decision, the Tate boss asks: "Is it a genuine Emin (£10,000) or a worthless fake?" The work is valued at £30,000.
The commercial show, entitled Go West, opens at the Spectrum Gallery in October.
"We've surprised people with our politics," said Thomson, a Stuckist founder. "Now we're asking people to respect our paintings."
Formed in 1999, their name derives from Emin's comment that her then boyfriend, Stuckist cofounder Billy Childish, was "stuck, stuck, stuck" in his artistic tastes.
Also on show in Go West are punk guitarist Paul Harvey's portraits of Madonna, Tara Palmer-Tomkinson and Nigella Lawson, wife of art collector Charles Saatchi.
Thomson said: "Charles Saatchi has become Stuckist. We started Stuckism to oppose the position he was taking seven years ago, a stance he has now adopted himself."
Stella Vine, the one-time stripper who found fame as an artist with controversial portraits of Princess Diana and Kate Moss, also features. Vine married Thomson in 2001 but the couple split up.
She took part in the Stuckists ' anti- Tate demonstration against the Rachel Whiteread sculpture that occupied the empty plinth in Trafalgar Square.
"The last time I showed some of Stella's work, she was incredibly flattered," said Thomson. "Nobody had ever taken any notice of what she'd done especially as she had not been painting for very long. She was so over the moon that she married me, which was a bit excessive."
He added: "Coming from nowhere, by showing British bulldog spirit, we've managed to form an international art movement in the teeth of the art establishment's complete contempt and desire to ignore us out of existence.
"Now Serota has said our investigations into the Tate's purchases were in the public interest, theoretically we should be invited everywhere with open arms. But the door is still shut in our faces."
Go West is on at the Spectrum Gallery, 77 Great Titchfield Street W1, from 6 October to 4 November.
